Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Buswell Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Korean Buddhism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Annotated Translation

Numinous Awareness is Never Dark examines the issue of whether enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is sudden or gradual: that is, something achieved in a sudden flash of insight, or through the gradual development of a sequential series of practices. In Excerpts, the Korean Zen master Chinul (1158-1210) offers one of the most thorough treatments of this “sudden/gradual issue” in all of premodern East Asian Buddhist literature, including extensive quotations from a wide range of his predecessors in Chinese and Korean Buddhism on the sudden/gradual issue. In Chinul’s analysis, enlightenment is actually both sudden and gradual: an initial sudden awakening to the numinous awareness, the buddha-nature, that is inherent in all sentient beings, followed by gradual cultivation that removes the deep-seated habitual proclivities of thought and conduct that continue to appear even after awakening. Chinul’s preferred approach of “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation” becomes emblematic of the subsequent Korean Buddhist tradition. In addition to an extensive study of the contours of the sudden/gradual debate in Buddhist thought and practice, the book also includes a complete, copiously annotated translation of Chinul’s magnum opus. In Buswell’s treatment, Chinul’s Excerpts emerges as the single most influential work ever written by a Korean Buddhist author.

On the Margins of Modernism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Rosenmeier
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Chinese Fiction ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Chinese Writing

Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.

The Graciousness of the Buddha to Sentient Beings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chamnong Kanthik ◽  
Sudaporn Khiewngamdee
Keyword(s):  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha

scholarly journals Zanjabeel (Zingiber officinale Roscoe.): An Evidence-Based Review of Anti-nociceptive, Anti-inflammatory, Antioxidant, and Antimicrobial Properties

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Fatima Khan ◽  
Mohd Nayab ◽  
Abdul Nasir Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Antioxidant Properties ◽  
Plant Secondary Metabolites ◽  
Zingiber Officinale ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Zingiber Officinale Roscoe ◽  
Medicinal Properties ◽  
Anti Inflammatory

Ginger has been appreciated for over 2500-3000 years in many parts of the world due to its numerous scientific properties. The ginger plant (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) belongs to the Zingiberaceae family. It is a known food and flavoring ingredient reputed for its wide range of medicinal properties that have been widely used in Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Unāni Tibb worldwide, since antiquity. Ginger has long been used to cure a variety of ailments, including diarrhea, stomach discomfort, indigestion, and nausea. It is a versatile herb with phenomenal phytotherapeutic and medicinal properties. Active ingredients available in ginger such as 6-gingerol, 6-shogaol, 6-paradol, and zingerone are responsible for upgrading enzyme actions and balancing circulation through rejuvenating the body with physical re-strengthening. Gingerols, the key phenolic plant secondary metabolites responsible for its distinct flavor and health benefits, are found in the rhizome of ginger Extensive study has been undertaken over the last two decades to uncover bioactive ingredients and the therapeutic potential of ginger. This review considers ginger's chemical composition and the most recent study findings on its possible health advantages, such as analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antioxidant properties due to its phytochemistry. Overall, clinical trials are needed to confirm these prospective various health advantages of ginger in human subjects and the most efficacious dosage, based on the current body of scientific literature.

The Platform Sūtra and Other Conspiracy Theories

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Cole
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
The Buddha

This chapter focuses on the Platform Sūtra. Composed sometime in the late eighth century, Platform Sūtra picks up and works over a number of claims regarding the Bodhidharma clan that had been put forth in earlier Chan works. The text opens with an unusually creative “autobiography” of Huineng, one that circles around an involved conspiracy supposedly orchestrated by master Hongren. As the details of the conspiracy come into focus, the reader learns that Hongren's chosen heir was not Shenxiu, but rather Huineng. With that startling “history” newly revealed roughly one hundred years after the events supposedly took place, the narrative turns to show Huineng giving a formal dharma teaching that, in places, appears to negate many of the building blocks of the Buddhist tradition, while also emphasizing the innate presence of perfect tradition within each person in the form of the buddha-nature.

Unfortunate Destiny

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiko Ohnuma
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Spiritual Potential ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Identity And Difference

This book focuses on the imagery and roles of nonhuman animals in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature. Part I examines the animal realm of rebirth in Buddhist doctrine and cosmology and shows that early Buddhist literature depicts the animal rebirth as a most “unfortunate destiny” (Skt. durgati), won through negative karma and characterized by violence, fear, suffering, and a lack of wisdom, moral agency, or spiritual potential. It also shows that although animals are capable of being reborn in heaven, the means by which this occurs are passive in nature, highly dependent upon the physical presence of a buddha, and categorically inferior to the spiritual cultivation unique to human beings alone. In contrast, Part II looks at the thinking, speaking, and highly anthropomorphized animals that populate many previous-life stories of the Buddha (jātakas). Not only do these animals exhibit wisdom and moral agency, they also use their powers of speech to condemn humanity for its moral shortcomings and expose humanity’s rampant abuse and exploitation of the animal world. Part III examines the roles played by major animal characters within the life-story of the Buddha, arguing that certain animal characters can be seen as “doubles” of the Buddha, illuminating the Buddha’s character through comparison with an animal “other.” Throughout the book, the author shows that humanity’s relationship to the animal is forever characterized by a simultaneous kinship and otherness, identity and difference, attraction and repulsion—and that discourse surrounding animals is primarily aimed at illuminating the nature of the human.

scholarly journals Literary Elements of the Sāstrā Lbaeng

MANUSYA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-92
Author(s):  
Santi Pakdeekam
Keyword(s):  
Life Time ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
The Buddha

This article studies and analyzes the literary elements of the Sāstrā Lbaeng. The “Sāstrā Lbaeng” or “Lbaeng Story” is a genre of medieval Khmer literature, which was composed to provide pleasure and entertainment for its readers. The literary elements of the Sāstrā Lbaeng include nine elements: 1) The eulogies of the Sāstrā Lbaeng classified into three types based on the language used, namely, Pāli, Khmer and Pāli-Khmer eulogies; 2) The date of composition, written after the eulogy; 3) The poet’s critical remarks about his work giving information about the author’s name, identity and career; 4) The purpose of the Sāstrā Lbaeng as being mostly to maintain Buddhism; 5) The source in Buddhist literature which inspired the composition; 6) The opening and setting, which are influenced by the “Story of the present” of the Jātaka literature; 7) The content which reflects the influence of Buddhist concepts; 8) Prachum Jātaka or Samodhāna explains the identity of the characters during the life time of the Buddha; 9) Some of the Sāstrā Lbaeng includes the aspiration of the poet or the audience to attain Nirvana. More than one topic may be included in the postscript.

The Buddha Nature: True Self as Action

1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sallie Behn King
Keyword(s):  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
True Self ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
Linguistic Level ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Apparent Conflict

Buddhism, and especially early Buddhism, is known for the anātman (no self) teaching. By any account, this teaching is central to both doctrine and practice from the beginning. Zen Buddhism (Chinese Ch'an), in contrast, is known for its teaching that the single most important thing in life is to discover the ‘true self’. Is there a real, or only an apparent, conflict between these two versions of Buddhism? Certainly there is at the least a radical change in the linguistic formulation of the teaching. Examining the two teachings on the linguistic level, we note that the use of the term ‘true’ in the phrase ‘true self’ may indicate that we have here a conscious reformation of the place of the term ‘self’ in the tradition, or perhaps that the use of this phrase in Zen is the product of such a conscious formulation. Thus we may expect, upon investigation, to find an evolution from one teaching to the other, rather than a true doctrinal disparity. The apparent, or linguistic, conflict between the two, however, remains; hence we must also expect to find a doctrinal formulation at some point in this evolution in which the apparent conflict is consciously apprehended and resolved.

scholarly journals Comparing the Parinirvāṇa Scene in Buddhist Murals of Myanmar | မြန်ြာနှိိုင်ငံရှှိ ဗိုဒ္ဓဝင်နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီြ ာေးြှ ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်စံခန်ေးကှိို နှိှိုင်ေးယှဉ်မခင်ေး

SPAFA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aye Aye Oo
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Made In

From the beginning of the Bagan period (11th century CE), Buddha’s Parinirvāṇa Scene has been depicted on wall paintings in religious buildings and hollow vaulted temples at various places of middle Myanmar. It is found that wall paintings based on the Maha Parinirvāṇa Sutta vary in layout and size from period to period with Buddhist literature: just as single-scenes and small or large wall paintings were depicted during the Bagan period so also were depictions of multiple scenes made in the late Konbaung Period. Further additions were introduced in depictions of Buddha’s Parinirvāṇa in the late Bagan Period. When studying the Buddha’s Parinirvāṇa scene on wall paintings, the depicting styles and colour changed from period to period. Depending on the colour, the periods can be interpreted definitely. Wall paintings depicting the Parinirvāṇa Sutta at temples located in Bagan and middle Myanmar regions are compared among themselves to show differences and similarities. Accounts of the purported events surrounding the Buddha's own Parinirvāṇa are found in a wide range of Buddhist countries of South East Asia. This paper concludes that the hypothesis is viable, with comparisons with the wall paintings depicting Buddha’s Parinirvāṇa Scene in Myanmar and how the style changed and transformed.မြန်ြာနှိိုင်ငံအလယ်ပှိိုင်ေးဆနရာအနှံှံ့အမပာေးတွင် ပိုဂံဆခတ်အဆစာပှိိုင်ေးကာလ(၁၁ရာစို)ြှစ၍ ဗိုဒ္ဓ၏ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်စံခန်ေးကှိို ဘာသာ ဆရေး ှိိုင်ရာ အဆ ာက်အဦေးအြ ှိြုေးြ ှိြုေးနှငဲ့် ဂူဘိုရာေးဝတ်မပြုဆက ာင်ေးြ ာေး၏နံရံြ ာေးတွင် သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲခွဲဲ့ကကသည်။ ြဟာပရှိ နှိဗဗာနသိုတတံကှိို အဆမခခံဆသာ နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီြ ာေး၏ အခင်ေးအက င်ေး၊ အရွယ်အစာေးြ ာေးသည် ဆခတ်ကာလအလှိိုက် ကွွဲမပာေး မခာေးန ေးြှိုရှှိပပျီေး ပိုဂံဆခတ်ကာလက ဇာတ်ကွက်တစ်ကွက်ကှိိုသာ အရွယ်အစာေးအာေးမ ငဲ့် ကကျီေးသည်မ စ်ဆစ၊ ငယ်သည်မ စ်ဆစ နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီတွင် သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲဆလဲ့ရှှိပပျီေး ကိုန်ေးဆဘာင်ဆခတ်ဆနှ င်ေးပှိိုင်ေးကာလတွင် ဇာတ်ကွက်တစ်ကွက်ထက် ပှိိုြှိို ဆရေး ွွဲလာသည်ကှိို ဆတွွေ့ရှှိရပါသည်။ ဗိုဒ္ဓ၏ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်မပြုပံိုဇာတ်ကွက်အာေး သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲရာတွင် ပိုဂံဆခတ်ဆနှ င်ေးပှိိုင်ေးကာ လ၌ ထပ်ြံထညဲ့်သွင်ေးြှိုြ ာေးကှိို မပြုလိုပ်လာကကသည်။ နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီြှ ဗိုဒ္ဓ၏ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်ဇာတ်ကွက်အာေးဆလဲ့လာသညဲ့်အခါ သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲြှိုပံိုစံြ ာေးနှငဲ့် ဆ ေးဆရာင်မခယ်သြှိုြ ာေးြှာ ဆခတ်ကာလအလှိိုက် ဆမပာင်ေးလွဲလာကကသည်။ ဆ ေးဆရာင်မခယ်သ ြှိုအဆပေါ်ြူတည်၍ ဆခတ်ကာလကှိို အတှိအက ဆ ာ်မပနှိိုင်သည်။ ပိုဂံနှငဲ့်မြန်ြာနှိိုင်ငံအလယ်ပှိိုင်ေးြှ ဘာသာဆရေးအဆ ာက်အဦေး ြ ာေးနှငဲ့် ဂူဘိုရာေးဝတ်မပြုဆက ာင်ေးြ ာေးတွင်ရှှိဆသာ နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီြ ာေး၌ ပရှိနှိဗဗာနသိုတတံအာေး သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲပံိုြ ာေးအကကာေး ကွွဲမပာေးမခာေးန ေးြှို၊ တူညျီြှိုတှိိုှံ့အာေး မပသနှိိုင်ရန်နှိှိုင်ေးယှဉ်ဆလဲ့လာထာေးပါသည်။ အဆရှွေ့ဆတာင်အာရှြှ ဗိုဒ္ဓဘာသာဝင်နှိိုင်ငံြ ာေးအ ကကာေး ဗိုဒ္ဓ၏ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်စံခန်ေးနှငဲ့်စပ်လ ဉ်ေးသညဲ့်ဆ ာ်မပခ က်ြ ာေးကှိို က ယ်မပနှံ့်စွာဆတွွေ့ရှှိရဆပသည်။ ယခိုစာတြ်ေးသည် အဆရှွေ့ ဆတာင်အာရှနှိိုင်ငံြ ာေးြှ နံရံဆ ေးဆရေးပန်ေးခ ျီြ ာေးတွင် သရိုပ်ဆ ာ်ဆရေး ွွဲထာေးဆသာ ပရှိနှိဗဗာန်စံခန်ေးနှငဲ့်ထှိိုင်ေးနှိိုင်ငံတှိိုှံ့ြှသရိုပ်ဆ ာ် ပံိုြ ာေးကှိို နှိှိုင်ေးယှဉ်ဆလဲ့လာြှိုြ ာေး မပြုလိုပ်နှိိုင်သည်ဟူဆသာ အယူအ ကှိို ဆကာက်ခ က်ခ ထာေးပါသည်။

scholarly journals The AGN fuelling/feedback cycle in nearby radio galaxies – III. 3D relative orientations of radio jets and CO discs and their interaction

2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (4) ◽  
pp. 5719-5731
Author(s):  
Ilaria Ruffa ◽  
Robert A Laing ◽  
Isabella Prandoni ◽  
Rosita Paladino ◽  
Paola Parma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Radio Galaxies ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
3D Analysis ◽  
Very Large Array ◽  
Radio Jets ◽  
Rotation Axes ◽  
Feedback Cycle ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Disc Rotation ◽  
First Time

ABSTRACT This is the third paper of a series exploring the multifrequency properties of a sample of eleven nearby low-excitation radio galaxies (LERGs) in the southern sky. We are conducting an extensive study of different galaxy components (stars, dust, warm and cold gas, radio jets) with the aim of better understanding the AGN fuelling/feedback cycle in LERGs. Here, we present new, deep, sub-kpc resolution Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) data for five sample sources at 10 GHz. Coupling these data with previously acquired Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) CO(2–1) observations and measurements of comparable quality from the literature, we carry out for the first time a full 3D analysis of the relative orientations of jet and disc rotation axes in six FR I LERGs. This analysis shows (albeit with significant uncertainties) that the relative orientation angles span a wide range (≈30○–60○). There is no case where both axes are accurately aligned and there is a marginally significant tendency for jets to avoid the disc plane. Our study also provides further evidence for the presence of a jet-CO disc interaction (already inferred from other observational indicators) in at least one source, NGC 3100. In this case, the limited extent of the radio jets, along with distortions in both the molecular gas and the jet components, suggest that the jets are young, interacting with the surrounding matter and rapidly decelerating.

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